The MMORPG Chronicles of Elyria has a turbulent history. In the beginning it was able to inspire many players with its special concept and earn millions through crowdfunding. Then the studio went bankrupt. Now the boss Jeromy Walsh explains how high the expenses really were and warns other indie developers.
How did the development of the game go? Chronicles of Elyria wanted to create a realistic fantasy world where your characters would age over time. They got gray hair, wrinkles and at some point the final death followed.
The concept was well received, and the game raised $1.3 million on Kickstarter in 2016. A total of $7.7 million is said to have been raised by 2019, for example through the sale of a virtual advent calendar for $95 or other special promotions.
A pre-alpha of the game was released on March 20, 2020, which shocked many fans: it had nothing in common with the vision of a great MMORPG that was described. In retrospect, the pre-alpha was probably a last, desperate attempt to convince anyone else of the project. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that many employees would be laid off and the game “almost retired”.
Walsh is now building the MMORPG alone to the end – at some point.
What is Chronicles of Elyria – Pre-Alpha
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Boss warns other developers about costs after failure
How is the studio now? In the fourth quarter of 2022, the last full-time employee was laid off. Jeromy Walsh now works alone on the projects. The first thing he wants to do is release a strategy game called Kingdoms of Elyria, which will contain part of the content of Chronicles of Elyria, namely building your own settlement.
After that, the MMORPG should be financed.
Walsh regularly writes blog entries in which he reports on the progress. However, the latest issue deals with the topic of financing. He begins the blog post with:
I want to give current and future business owners – especially game developers – an understanding of the real and hidden costs of running a small game studio (17 employees on average). There are very few such breakdowns, so I hope this proves to be a valuable resource for others.
In it he explains how the average costs of his studio were made up in the years 2017 to 2019. He left out the years 2015 and 2016 because the studio had hardly any employees there, and from 2020 onwards he had to thin out the number of employees very much and there were also court costs, which he also left out.
What were the millions spent on? A considerable part went on the salaries of employees. Here alone 3.5 million dollars are booked. With 17 employees, that equates to an average salary of $68,000 per person per year. He himself paid out $96,000, making him the highest-earning person at the studio most of the time, but not always.
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Walsh also complains in the blog post about the hidden costs of crowdfunding, including tax fees because crowdfunding isn’t classified as investment capital, and constant renewals of copyrights because the game wasn’t a finished product.
He also warns potential developer studios about the costs of payroll taxes and health insurance and finally regrets not having taken out liability insurance for Soulbound Studios, as there have probably been various lawsuits in the meantime.
“Not an intentional scam, but incompetence”
How are the bakers reacting to the blog post? To this day, many people who invested money in the game are still mad at Jeromy Walsh. They repeatedly accused him of fraud and that he wanted to fill his pockets. The content shown so far was simply too far away from the actual vision.
The blog post has calmed things down a bit, at least for one or the other. User Negnar-Holf writes:
I think the real takeaway here – assuming those numbers are correct, though I don’t think Jeromy is stupid enough to incriminate himself by posting fake numbers – is that Jeromy never intended to commit a scam ( nor did I ever think so). What I think is that he is an absolutely incompetent CEO who has no idea how to manage finances.
He gets a lot of encouragement for this post. However, some also wonder why Walsh settles with an indie studio in Seattle, one of the most expensive cities in the USA.
However, for many it changes little about their actual point of criticism. They want to get a finished game for their money and that’s still a long way off.
But Chronicles of Elyria isn’t the only crowdfunding MMORPG that has failed. Here are more examples: 6 promising crowdfunding MMORPGs that failed miserably